


Relocation spells.

by orange_crushed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate.</i><br/>-Frank O'Hara</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relocation spells.

It's a traitor voice that hurtles out, past the defenses, past the shells and bullets of better judgement. His self-control is still giving him the slip tonight, smelling of firewhiskey. It's possible he finally drowned it. Suddenly it is out of Remus's own mouth that he is asking _stay, Pads._ Sirius looks at him strangely. He reaches up for that thick black hair and tugs; his thumb trails the scallop of an ear. Remus wets his lips. He doesn't say much more.

In the morning, Remus looks at the empty half of his rumpled bed and winces and wonders if now he will finally be able to throw up.

Sirius is gone again.

 

 

Lily doesn't think it's healthy.

"I'm just saying-" and she's just saying, he knows. Sirius is a wanderer. A fling. A good guy in lots of other ways, except this one. It's nothing Remus hasn't heard before from the other end of the telephone, while he lies very still with a washcloth on his head the next morning. Lily never raises her voice. He thinks that he should try to turn straight and steal her away to Bermuda and see if it takes.

"It's not going to happen again," he says, calmly. "I think I've learned my lesson." He's learned a lot of things. The bony knots of Sirius's hips in his palms and the smear of sweat on his upper lip, the soft way he bites collarbones and the sounds, the sounds. The false swell of his flat stomach when Sirius lies on his side, the brushed-up hair he holds off the back of his neck as he tries to cool down. The way he can't lie still in the dark, but moves his hands instead, makes fireflies out of the filtering dust and lights them above their heads. How he leans his chin on Remus's ribs and counts them and gives them stupid names. How he always disappears. What Remus has learned could fill a book.

Just not a lesson.

 

 

"So do you think-" Sirius's voice trails off. He smiles. His hair is wet, it's pouring outside. It would be best if he didn't head home through the weather. His cheeks are shiny with rain, his mouth is pink. Remus pries his fingers off the door frame.

"No," he says. Remus shuts the door and puts a hand over his heart, slides down the wall. Everything hurts. He tries to breathe without hiccuping. For the moment he succeeds. There are a lot of other moments. He goes to work four days that week and then wipes down tables at night, smiling politely for tips and balancing trays and keeping a nicely blank mind. He reads the paper. He eats dinner alone and drinks out of a mug with no handle, one he threw at Sirius weeks ago.

Lily calls to tell him that Sirius has been sleeping in their garden shed. "In the wheelbarrow," she adds. Remus remembers the summer when Sirius couldn't go home anymore, the bitter way he'd shrugged it off and said things were fine and shuffled between James's house and Andromeda's and then his own series of wretched muggle flats, every one more rebellious and disreputable and unhomely than the last. How he can never sit still. Remus can't believe it has taken him this long to figure it out. "I didn't want to tell you," Lily admits. "But he's so- I don't want you to feel like this is your fault, like you have to fix it. You always think that way."

"I can't even fix a mug," he says.

 

 

Remus goes to James and Lily's house at a time she has promised they will be out grocery shopping. Sirius stares at him from his dugout on the couch. From the hair on the back of the sofa, he has been sitting there as a dog.

"What can I tell you ?" Sirius asks. "What do you want to hear ?" His voice is unbearably lonely, and Remus wonders how he has never heard this before. "That you're it ? Christ, you're it, alright ? You were it weeks ago. Months ago. There hasn't been anyone else. There isn't going to be." Remus tries not to float on that, to drift away completely, and instead glares him down.

"Then where do you go ?"

"Out," he says, lamely. "I go out." He looks up. "What do you want me to do ?"

"I want you to come home," Remus says, "you stupid shit." He leans down and kisses him harder than he means to. Sirius grins into his mouth and sticks one finger though the buttonhole in his jacket front. He is pretty sure that he has finally said the right thing.


End file.
